Apple adds Tabs, Documents features to iCloud at WWDC

Familiar apps such as Notes, Reminders, and Messages also come to the cloud.

Apple announced new features coming to the iCloud at WWDC today, highlighted by the ability to access documents and open Web pages across Apple devices.

To access Web pages across devices, Apple introduced the iCloud Tabs feature in Safari. This function allows users to view all pages open across synced iPhones, laptops, and iPads, with the ability to access them. If a user wants to open a tab from another computer, clicking the iCloud Tabs button in Safari offers thumbnails of what you have open. Users can then use multitouch gestures to zoom in on a Web page to preview, then access.

Apple provides the same permeability with documents now, announcing Documents in the Cloud. A user can launch Preview to see all your PDFs in the cloud, then drag those documents to make them available within a device. Make a change on an iPhone for example and it'll be updated accordingly on a connected Mac.

In addition to Documents, Apple formally unveiled familiar apps Notes, Reminders, and Messages (corresponding to iMessage on the Mac) through iCloud. News of Notes and Reminders rolled out during the iCloud beta period for developers in May, but the inclusion of Messages was new. A user can now sit at their laptop as an iPhone rings, and simply respond without shifting devices.

Since launching iCloud in October, 125 million users have registered for the service. The number should only grow now that the newest Mountain Lion release comes with iCloud built-in. Leading up to the event, only other expected news for iCloud involved photo and video sharing capabilities (the Wall Street Journal first reported this in mid-May). At the time of this post, no announcements were made within that area. The Ars WWDC liveblog is still underway however and we will update accordingly if more iCloud announcements are made.

22 Reader Comments

Looks like there will be some pretty cool features. BUT if I can still only get 5gigs (for free anyway) I don't know that it will be all that useful. As soon as I signed up for icloud and tried to sync my photos I was already way over the limit.

I agree with Emminate. 5GB for free is just not good enough... It IS good enough for me backing up most of my iPad and iPhone prefferences, but it really doesn't leave too much room for documents, if at all.

I would really like to use Keynote on my iPad, Macs, and iCloud. But as long as the iPad version of Keynote doesn't support linking to movies in my iTunes library instead of insisting that they must be embedded into a presentation, this whole cloud thing is useless. If I need to embed my movies into every presentation, then each presentation easily becomes something between 500 MB - 1GB large. It is quite common to have the same movie in many different presentations. There are only two choices here; either they start supporting links from Keynote on iPad, or they should start selling iPads with 10 TB SSDs.

Have to admit I'm pretty lukewarm about iCloud and a lot of other cloud-based services. Seems like a lot of work has been done to avoid using a simple filesystem metaphor to a central server. Dropbox has done an admittedly nice job in that they manage to keep bandwidth requirements relatively low and performance high with their approach.

Apple seems to have let the IOS market with its sandboxing drive the design, and yet I just want to synch files between my Macs. RARELY do I wish I had access to a file on my phone, more so on my iPad, but not that often.

Have to admit I'm pretty lukewarm about iCloud and a lot of other cloud-based services. Seems like a lot of work has been done to avoid using a simple filesystem metaphor to a central server. Dropbox has done an admittedly nice job in that they manage to keep bandwidth requirements relatively low and performance high with their approach.

Apple seems to have let the IOS market with its sandboxing drive the design, and yet I just want to synch files between my Macs. RARELY do I wish I had access to a file on my phone, more so on my iPad, but not that often.

Am I missing something? Am I just being a codger about this?

Yes.

I often want a file on my phone, and buy apps to allow it. Removing the friction involved in syncing these docs between devices is quite desirable in my case. YMMV.

As a previous commentator mentions, however: 5 GB is never going to be enough. A C-note per year for 50 GB is sort of nuts, but lines up with other offerings (Dropbox).

Well, at least this "hints" at the possibility of moving more stuff off iTunes and into iCloud. iTunes has long been too much a diluted beast. We became unable to decide which to use, with the risk that, upon stopping one and starting the other, files "belonging to" the one would be destroyed and have to be rebuilt or restored for the other... BTDT

To access Web pages across devices, Apple introduced the iCloud Tabs feature in Safari. This function allows users to view all pages open across synced iPhones, laptops, and iPads, with the ability to access them. If a user wants to open a tab from another computer, clicking the iCloud Tabs button in Safari offers thumbnails of what you have open.

Can someone help a poor fool? What is the benefit to accessing multiple web pages on multiple devices from iCloud?

Can someone help a poor fool? What is the benefit to accessing multiple web pages on multiple devices from iCloud?

I guess why not? I don't think I'd ever use the feature, but I suppose some people would.

I guess a hypothetical would be you're on your iPod Touch checking a website, but your kid wants to play a game. You then could simply open Safari and go back to what you were reading. A stretch, but there are potential uses.

Looks like there will be some pretty cool features. BUT if I can still only get 5gigs (for free anyway) I don't know that it will be all that useful. As soon as I signed up for icloud and tried to sync my photos I was already way over the limit.

What do you mean by "sync your photos"? Sync to where, exactly? iCloud is not dropbox, so your comment doesn't really make sense.

Photostream automatically captures photos, but it's a limit of 1,000 pictures up to a month old and it doesn't count against your 5 GB of storage space.

Since supposedly every other browser had this for ages, it must be incredibly useful.

I'm not sure you understood my question. Have you ever had a need to access content on another device's browser, instead of just opening a browser locally and view it? Why is it necessary to view it on another device, through iCloud?